Bedouin history and culture

Salah abu Musa and Maruan El-Touni of Sinai Safari would like to thank all the people who participated in organising the Dahab Bedouin Festival and the Dahab Festival. Many thanks to Oasis Fighting Kangaroo Camp and Desert Divers for their much appreciated help and presence. Also a big thank you to Mohamed Musa of Dahab Desert Camp and Sabbah and Eid from Abu Awda Camp/Safari for their crucial participation. Most of all, thank you to Salem of Sinai Bedouin Safari and Mondi of Nomad Safari for helping us all have a great time organising 2 festivals in the space of 20 days!

In sha Allah, we will learn from this year to make next year even better…

Many Bedouin have been very quickly confronted with modern life and have not had the time to adapt or the means to preserve their way of life. Their inexperience has not allowed them to see the changes that came their way or be aware of the dangers of modernisation. For these reasons, many Bedouin have very little to rely on with very few having any education permitting them to have well paid employment, and have lived a very traditional lifestyle for thousands of years with practically no developments until the arrival of mass tourism developments in the last 25 years.

We are a Bedouin organisation and employ Bedouin exclusively, however, many remain unemployed and with little resources. Amongst some of our projects will be to revive Bedouin handicrafts and hand made products such as carpets, goat skin water containers, shep wool clothes and covers etc…, collect warm clothes for children and elderly people living in the cold areas of the desert, collecting donations to purchase clothes, provide financial and volunteer assistance to help in farming projects, supplying villages with basic foods such as rice, flour, oil, sugar etc…

Any little contribution helps. With as little as 20 egyptian pounds ($3 or 2.5 euros), we can buy a second hand warm jacket for a child. Your contributions go entirely towards the actual projects, materials, food, clothes…all of us here also work as volunteers and do not charge for any services or transport. If you would like to help us with our charity work,

Most people are not happy with the thought of rain, specially travelers on holiday seeking sunny skies. But in the Sinai desert like in any other desert, its inhabitants long for rain. The rain has a phenomenal effect in the desert, although devastating to Bedouin living in very basic shelters and to anyone in the flood paths. The desert is cleaned leaving pools of water and sprouting millions of waiting seeds. The results show a few months after, plants grow bigger and greener, dying plants come back to life, and the landscape is covered with new plants and wildlife.

The rain is not only beneficial to plants and trekkers who get a different perspective of the desert, the goats and sheep can graze and eat natural and often medicinal plants to their fill. The bedouin milk the goats and make butter, guy and cheese. They also benefit from not having to buy food for their flock.